Thread by @SteB777

On Saturday's Climate Crisis Club, it came up whether there was really an emergency. I couldn't address this, as my communication kept dropping out.

I want to address this here. Yes, there is an emergency, but at different levels.

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https://twitter.com/NBPTROCKS/status/1776300164149383304

By emergency at different levels, I mean:

1) The danger of something happening soon.

2) Near/medium term societal impacts.

3) the level at when our civilization becomes impossible.
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All these are essentially unknowable, but there seems a lot of consensus, on how around 3C of warming, it'd make it difficult for our civilization to persist.

However, there could be serious problems that could lead to the collapse of our civilization at a much lower level.
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General impacts could create social and political instability in the medium/near term, that could destabilize our societies, and lead to collapse or global conflict. These needn't be of the big impact type, that would make our Civilization impossible.
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Finally, and most frighteningly, there are the possibility of short term, Black Swan events, such as food shortages, which could happen, any time from this year onwards.

5/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swa…

We are far enough into climate related extreme weather events, where a likely unforeseen perfect storm of extreme weather events, could impact, global food supplies.

There needn't be absolute shortages to create chaos.

6/apnews.com/article/un-cli…

Merely limited supplies, could cause hyperinflation, social unrest, and global conflict. Whilst this tends to be thought of as further in the future, we can not rule them out, as happening any year now. This is not a prediction, just a possibility.

7/geographical.co.uk/climate-change…

There's little understanding of how vulnerable our societies are, and how this type of event, could cause rapid instability, and even eventually, whole system collapse. I'm not trying to be alarmist, and I hope nothing like this is on the horizon.
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I'm merely pointing out, that we've let things go too far, and near term shocks, cannot be ruled out, even if it is more likely, these shocks will be further into the future.

We have already seen extreme weather events, that have taken society by surprise.
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We just have to hope that none of these extreme weather events occur together in major food producing regions. It's beyond absurd, what we are left, just hoping it doesn't happen, because our governments and system, are ill-prepared.

10/theccc.org.uk/2023/03/29/cli…

It is, as I say, far more likely these impacts, will happen further into the future. The further we go into the future, with rising emissions, the more likely there will be a Black Swan event, that will catch us out.
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One of the problems, is that government planning, and academic climate scenario projections, tend to be focused on the longer term limits and big climate impacts, rather than the lower risk of a near term Black Swan event.
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Whilst near term Black Swan events are probabilistically far less likely, less probable things do happen, and they certainly can't be ruled out. Likewise, how they occur, is almost impossible to predict.
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It could vary from a whiff of grapeshot warning, with some local famine, supply problems, even greater food inflation than currently, to an all out crisis, that means our societies will never been the same again.
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We've been playing with fire, letting things get this bad. We're definitely seeing more extreme weather events, record heat, threats of wet bulb temperatures, exceeding human survival limits, none of which can be predicted accurately.

15/theguardian.com/science/2022/j…

This is why I say, those saying this is not an emergency don't know what they are talking about. Because these things cannot be ruled out, and are real possibilities. We really shouldn't have been ignoring this possibility of short term Black Swan events.
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I think one of the reasons governments have not properly planned for near term Black Swan events, is they've been trying to put off taking action. They don't want the public to panic, and demand more radical action, they're reluctant to take.
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My purpose for raising this, is not to create alarm, but to create the impetus, for more contingency planning for food shortages in the near term. Because if we're prepared, it shouldn't be catastrophic. Whereas if it takes is by surprise, without contingency planning.
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I can say things like this, because I don't have any official position to worry about, and my following and influence is not big enough to create panic.

That's all I wanted to say, that we need to be aware and wary of short term impacts, even if they are less likely.
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